In modern aircraft construction, fuselage cells are usually manufactured in the so-called section assembly process. In this process, subassembly components such as, for example, side shells, upper and lower shells as well as floor structures and if applicable further system components such as, for example, technical equipment systems are integrated to form a fuselage section. The complete fuselage cell of an aircraft is then formed by a plural number of fuselage sections arranged one behind another.
Presently used production plants for manufacturing fuselage cells comprise positioning devices by means of which the subassembly components are taken up and spatially aligned in relation to each other. The necessary data for alignment is determined by means of a suitable measuring device. The actual alignment then takes place in a manually controlled manner in an iterative process. However, in this process, apart from meeting the required high fitting accuracy, it is, in particular, also necessary to limit the forces acting on the subassembly components, for example to prevent undefined self-deformation resulting from external mechanical forces acting on the subassembly components. However, as a result of these effects, the number of iterative processes and procedures to be carried out by the individual positioning devices until a predetermined desired position has been reached increases. Furthermore, in the case of manual positioning, for safety reasons as a rule only ever one positioning device moves at any given time. The above-mentioned disadvantages in the hitherto-used practice during assembly of fuselage sections or in the devices used for this purpose results in longer assembly times.
It is the object of the invention to create a device that makes it possible to set a predetermined desired geometric shape of subassembly components as quickly as possible and subsequently to move the subassembly components, by means of preferably simple traverse movements, to a position where they can be tacked and/or joined.